110 EANtSEKA, KIKS OF KASSHFS.
established Before the birth of Christ, it is difficult to understand why it should
have lain so long dormant and then have become so curiously rawed and so
generally adopted.
Various solutions of the diUculty hare been attempted. It has been
definitely ascertained that the title Yikxam&ditya was borne by a king Sri
Harsha, who reigned at TJjaiyin? in the first half of the sixth century A. D.,
and General Cimningham conjectures with some probability that it was he
who restored the general use of the old era (which had been to a great extent
superseded by the introduction of the Saka era in 79 A. D.) and made it
his own? simply by changing its name to that which it now bears. The king
by whom it wss really established about the year 57 B. C. he conceives to have
been the Indo-Scythian Kanishka.
This is a personage who as yet scarcely figures at all in histories intended
for the general reader ; but it is certain that he was one of the greatest sover-
eigns that ever held sway in Upper India and3 if not the first to introduce Bud-
dhism, was at least the one who definitely established it as the state religion.
The Sanskrit Chronicle, entitled the Raja-Tarangini^ mentions among the
successors of the great Asoka, in the latter half of the century immediately
preceding the birth of Christ, three kings of foreign descent named Hnshka
(or Havislika), Jushka? and Kpnishka. The later Mnhammadaxi, writers
represent them as brothers : but it is not so stated in the original test, the
words of which are simply as follows : ó >
w There, too, die three kings, Hnshka, Jushka, and Kanishka, born
of Turoshka descent, monarchs of eminent virtue. In their exalted reign a
great pact of ihe region of Kashmir was occupied by peripatetic Buddhist
meto,"
dominions are known to have included K&u], Kashmir, and the
wad reeeatiy discovered iascriptions imply that their sway extended
as far sonik m Matksri, It is irae that many of tlie religious buildings
in fcol j plęsw haw beta fomided by foreign priacesj wto had no territorial